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From Sergio Leone, the acclaimed director of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West comes his final Western, A Fistful of Dynamite (aka Duck, You Sucker! and released in some territories as Once Upon A Time... the Revolution). Starring acting giants Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night) as Juan Miranda, an amoral peasant-turned-outlaw, and James Coburn (Pat Garret..
From the inimitable Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend) comes this classic comedy that mixes romance with hard-boiled wit in a story about stiff-necked Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur – Shane) mired in jaded post-war Berlin. As she investigates the morale of American troops, Phoebe is cynically wooed by fellow Iowan Captain John Pringle (John Lund), who is trying to cover up his affair with Nazi-tainted cha..
Ranked as one of the finest British films of all time, director Fred Zinnemann's (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, Day of the Jackal) A Man for All Seasons was lavished with awards and critical praise upon release for its opulent mise en scene and the incredible performances from its cast. Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield), England's Roman Catholic Chancellor, is forced into a difficult position when corrupt King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw,..
Taiwanese martial arts feature. The film follows the painter Ku (Shih Jun) as he tries to protect a female fugitive, Yang (Hsu Feng), from being captured by an evil eunuch. After the eunuch arrives with an army of East Chamber guards, the artist and the warrior fortify Ku's mother's supposedly haunted mansion and set ghostly traps in preparation for the soldiers' arrival. Will the pair survive the inevitable battles?..
Director Elia Kazan's first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn shows that the filmmaker's great empathy for his characters was already quite evident at this early juncture, and this endures as one of the most moving Hollywood dramas of the 1940s. Based on Betty Smith's novel – a bestseller in the U.S. but also one of the most popular books among American soldiers overseas in WWII – Kazan's debut is a sensitive, masterful adaptation. Set amo..
The debut feature of Italian filmmaker-novelist-poet-provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò, or: The 120 Days of Sodom; The Gospel According to Matthew; The Decameron), Accattone rocked the cinema world with its depictions, at once raw and elegant, of the underside of Roman street life – and, in the process, seemed to announce a new direction for Italian films: a neo-neorealism.On the mean streets of Rome, Accattone’s eponymous pimp (pla..
Since re-emerging in the 2000s, Billy Wilder's superb Ace in the Hole, so ahead of its time in the 1950s with its acidic and unflinching examination of journalistic ethics and human morality, has taken its place alongside Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment as among the director's greatest works. In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspap..
Often acknowledged as one of the best prison films ever made, Birdman of Alcatraz was director John Frankenheimer’s first huge success and received rave reviews for its performances, cinematography (by the great Burnett Guffey; From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde) and Frankenheimer’s directing. Burt Lancaster stars as the notorious prisoner, Robert Stroud, sentenced to a life of solitary confinement for murdering a prison guard. Whe..
LIMITED EDITION BOOKLET (FIRST PRINT RUN) - IF LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS (BOOKLET) ARE REQUIRED PLEASE CHECK WITH CUSTOMER SERVICES THAT THIS IS STILL AVAILABLE BEFORE ORDERINGBetween 1920 and 1929, Buster Keaton created a peerless run of feature films that established him as “arguably the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies”. Collected here are three further films from that era; Our Hospitality, Go West and College. ..
Between 1920 and 1929, Buster Keaton created a peerlessrun of feature films that established him a "arguably the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". Collected here are three key films from that era:Sherlock Jr., The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr. Together they represent a true master at his peak, and The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present all three films on Blu-ray from stunning 4K restorations. Sherlock..
LIMITED EDITION BOOKLET (FIRST PRINT RUN) - IF LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS (BOOKLET) ARE REQUIRED PLEASE CHECK WITH CUSTOMER SERVICES THAT THIS IS STILL AVAILABLE BEFORE ORDERINGPresented from stunning 4K restorations, The Masters of Cinema Series presents three films by the great Buster Keaton on Blu-ray. The Navigator (1924, dir. Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp) – Wealthy Rollo Treadway (Keaton) suddenly decides to propose to his neighbo..
LIMITED EDITION BOOKLET (FIRST PRINT RUN) - IF LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS (BOOKLET) ARE REQUIRED PLEASE CHECK WITH CUSTOMER SERVICES THAT THIS IS STILL AVAILABLE BEFORE ORDERINGThe brutal and uncompromising Champion earned Kirk Douglas his first ever Oscar nomination and was a huge success for director Mark Robson (Von Ryan’s Express, Valley of the Dolls). Michael "Midge" Kelly (Douglas) is a boxer whose fight to the top is unhampered..
After the visual fireworks of Sunrise and the now-lost splendour of 4 Devils, F.W. Murnau turned his attention to this vivid, painterly study of an impulsive and fragile marriage among the wheatfields of Minnesota. During a brief stay in Chicago, innocent farmer’s son Lem falls for and weds Kate, a hard-bitten but lonely waitress. Upon bringing her home at the start of harvest time, the honeymoon soon turns into a claustrophobic struggl..
A virtuoso World War II espionage thriller directed by Fritz Lang as his follow-up to the noir classic Scarlet Street (and not long after the war itself had ended), Cloak and Dagger is an underrated entry in Lang's oeuvre, a crackerjack spy saga with a commanding Gary Cooper performance and a wealth of masterful Langian suspense sequences (as well as some genuinely hard-hitting action set pieces). Nuclear physicist Alvah Jesper (Coope..
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is one of the wonderful highlights of an under-appreciated chapter of director Robert Altman's career. Between the box office disappointment of Popeye (1980) and the explosive comeback of The Player (1992), Altman returned to lower-budgeted, independent filmmaking, often boldly experimenting with how theatre work could be inventively adapted for cinema and television. This period of Altm..
One of the first American films to deal seriously with the plight of Vietnam veterans returning to the States after the war, Coming Home originated from a possibly unlikely source: star Jane Fonda commissioned the project as a vehicle for exploring the difficulties faced by both returning vets, and the loved ones who remained at home. The result would be ine of the most acclaimed movies of the 1970s, and an immensely moving portrait of ..
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa first came to prominence in the West with his J-Horror masterpieces Cure and Pulse [Kairo]. Now he makes a triumphant return to the horror genre with Creepy, a macabre and deeply unsettling thriller that has sent shivers down the spines of audiences worldwide. Based on a novel by Yutaka Maekawa, Creepy follows ex-police detective and criminal psychologist Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Dolls), who moves to a qu..
Illicit passion, greed, robbery, and murder collide in Criss Cross, a classic film noir suspense tale from a true master of the genre, Robert Siodmak (The Killers). Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster – Novecento, Birdman of Alcatraz) is a hardworking armoured car driver with a fatal attraction to his ex-wife Anna (Yvonne DeCarlo – The Munsters), who's now married to notorious hoodlum Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea – Winchester ‘73). Unable to st..
Released to critical acclaim in both the East and the West, Cure was a breakthrough film for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a nerve shredding thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in a bleak and decaying Tokyo. A series of murders have been committed by ordinary people who claim to have had no control over their horrifying actions. Following the only link - a mysterious stranger who had brief contact with each perpetrator and their vi..
One of world cinema's most dynamic and highly regarded auteurs, Hou Hsiao-hsien has influenced entire generations of filmmakers and was once dubbed "one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema". The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present three films from early in his career,Cute Girl, The Green, Green Grass of Home and The Boys from Fengkuei, all making their worldwide debut on Blu-ray and presented from stu..
One of the most iconic masterpieces in cinema history, Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.) shook filmgoers worldwide and changed the direction of the art form. Now presented in a definitive restoration, the film’s chilling, radically expressionist vision is set to grip viewers again. At a local carnival in a small German town, hypnotist Dr. Caligari presents the somnambulist Cesare, who can purport..
With the etching onto glass of a single word - "Mabuse" - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang’s electrifying Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master’s legendary Dr. Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema ever before - or since. It’s been eleven years since the downfall o..
Taiwanese auteur House Hsiao-hsien followed up his highly acclaimed coming-of-age trilogy of films with Daughter of the Nile [Ni luo he nu er], a rich and poignant drama about a young woman struggling to support her family amidst the violent and neon-soaked milieu of 1980's Tapei. Lin [Lin Yang] works as a waitress in a fried chicken restaurant, attends night school and pines after her brother's friend, local gigolo Ah-sang (Fan Yang). ..
Revered by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, the great director Andre de Toth made some of the most gripping and unusual American films of the 1950s, and Day of the Outlaw stands as one of his finest. Robert Ryan plays the ruthless cattleman Blaise Starrett who rides into the small, snowbound town of Bitters to settle a feud with homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) over access to land, with one eye on rekindling a pas..
An iconic early horror masterpiece, Der Golem was Paul Wegener’s third attempt at adapting the Golem character for the big screen. Starring and co-directing with Carl Boese, Wegener crafted one of silent cinema’s most enduring masterpieces. In the Jewish ghetto in 16th century Prague, Rabbi Low (Albert Streinruck, Asphalt) creates a forbidding clay Golem (played by director Paul Wegener) to protect his people from the tyrannical Empe..
In the Jewish ghetto in 16th century Prague, the community leader and astrologer Rabbi Low (Albert Streinruck) foresees doom for his people written in the stars. A short time later, the Emperor Luhois (Otto Gebuhr) issues an expulsion order to the people, Low creates a forbidding clay golem (Paul Wegener) that he brings to life with the assistance of a demon spirit and an amulet placed in the centre of the creature's chest, Subsequently..
Before directing numerous genre defining masterpieces such as Metropolis, M, and Spione, Fritz Lang was already defying cinematic conventions with Der mude Tod (literally, The Weary Death). A young woman (Lil Dagover) confronts the personification of Death (Bernhard Goetzke), in an effort to save the life of her fiance (Walter Janssen). Death weaves three romantic tragedies and offers to unite the girl with her lover, if she can prevent..
Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as "the Indian epic" prov..
A masterwork of the German silent cinema whose reputation has only increased over time, Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) traces the journey of a young woman from the pit of despair to the moment of personal awakening. Directed with virtuoso flair by the great G. W. Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl represents the final pairing of the filmmaker with screen icon Louise Brooks, mere months after their first collaboration in the n..
Perhaps the most stately of Fritz Lang's two-part epics, the five-hour Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungen) is a courageous and hallucinatory work, a film in which every single shot might alone endure as an exemplar of visual art. Its extraordinary set-pieces, archetypal themes, and unrestrained ambition have proved an inspiration for nearly every fantasy cycle that has emerged on-screen since - from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings. In Pa..
Perhaps the most stately of Fritz Lang's two-part epics, the five-hour Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungen) is a courageous and hallucinatory work, a film in which every single shot might alone endure as an exemplar of visual art. Its extraordinary set-pieces, archetypal themes, and unrestrained ambition have proved an inspiration for nearly every fantasy cycle that has emerged on-screen since - from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings. In Pa..
Double Indemnity is the dazzling, quintessential film noir whose enormous popular success and seven Oscar nominations catapulted Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment) into the very top tier of Hollywood's writer-directors. Adapted from a novella by James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), Double Indemnity remains the hardest-bo..
One of the legendary epics of the silent cinema - and the first part of a trilogy that Fritz Lang developed up to the very end of his career - Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler) is a masterpiece of conspiracy that, even as it precedes the mind-blowing Spione from the close of Lang's silent cycle, constructs its own dark labyrinth from the base materials of human fear and paranoia. Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays Dr. Mabuse, the..
A quintessential entryway into the highly stylized, tightly choreographed wuxia genre of martial arts cinema, Dragon Inn was a global breakthrough for the form's greatest practitioner, King Hu. Its influence remains incalculable, from its annihilation of traditional expectations of what kind of role an actress should inhabit (also chipped away at by Hu's previous masterpiece Come Drink with Me), to the formation of many of the genre's a..
Hong Kong action pioneer Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and martial arts superstar Jackie Chan burst onto the scene in 1978 with a one-two punch of kung fu masterpieces, and it was the second of these, Drunken Master, with its Keatonesque slapstick and flawlessly choreographed fight scenes that would make the biggest impact. Jackie Chan plays Wong Fei-hung (a legendary Chinese folk hero who has also been port..
LIMITED EDITION SLIPCASE + BOOKLET (FIRST PRINT RUN) - IF LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS (SLIPCASE + BOOKLET) ARE REQUIRED PLEASE CHECK WITH CUSTOMER SERVICES THAT THIS IS STILL AVAILABLE BEFORE ORDERINGThe Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present three early silent features from Universal Pictures, all fully restored as part of the studio’s ongoing restoration program. Skinner’s Dress Suit (dir. William A. Seiter, 1926) – Reginald De..
Murnau's last German film features astonishing photography, magnificent art direction, and special effects which retain the power to amaze. Freed from the constraints of psychological narrative, Murnau's mastery of cinematic technique places Faust, eine deutsche Volkssage (Faust: A German Folktale) at the pinnacle of the silent era, its barrage of visceral and apocryphal imagery contrasting with the simplicity and directness of its spir..
For his penultimate film, Billy Wilder created this elegiac, potent and richly entertaining mystery. Reuniting with one of his greatest actors William Holden, and co-written with his longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, this is an exquisitely crafted tale of romance and intrigue. Washed-up producer Barry 'Dutch' Detweiler (William Holden) attempts to lure the iconic but reclusive actress Fedora (Marthe Keller) out of retirement in a bi..
Only the second Hollywood film directed by Billy Wilder, the riveting World War II spy thriller Five Graves to Cairo is an underrated early gem from the filmmaker, who would ascend to the industry's highest ranks with his next project, Double Indemnity. Five Graves demonstrates that Wilder and screenwriter Charles Brackett—who would collaborate on thirteen films, winning screenplay Oscars for The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard—were a..
One of Hollywood's toughest and most idiosyncratic filmmakers, Robert Aldrich (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Dirty Dozen) had one of his greatest and most cherished popular successes with the thrilling adventure classic The Flight of the Phoenix, headlined by an all-star cast including James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine and Hardy Kruger. A cargo plane carrying an assortment of oilmen and military pe..
Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly render the very spirit of Franciscan teaching in this extraordinarily fresh and simple film - largely unappreciated at the time of its release, but now regarded as one of his greatest. Shot in a neorealist manner with non-professional actors (including thirteen actual Franciscan monks) it avoids the pious cliches of haloed movie saints with an economy of expression and a touchin..
One of the key works of the early 1950s wave of Japanese films to first reach foreign markets, director Kinugasa's sumptuous period drama astonished audiences with its dramatic force and spectacular colour cinematography. During feudal unrest in the 12th century, samurai warrior Morit (Kazuo Hasegawa) manages to thwart a palace rebellion and save the life of the empress, using loyal subject Lady Kesa (Machiko Ky ) as a decoy. When Morit..
Of all Masaki Kobayashi’s attacks on the cruelty and inhumanity perpetrated by authoritarian power (including The Human Condition and Samurai Rebellion), perhaps none are more brilliant than his visceral, mesmerising Harakiri (aka Seppuku). In a magnificent performance, Tatsuya Nakadai (Yojimbo, The Face of Another, Ran) stars as Hanshiro Tsugumo, a masterless down-and-out samurai who enters the manor of Lord Iyi, requesting to commit r..
The American action auteur Walter Hill made a magnificent debut with this pulp triumph, featuring evocative period atmosphere and sterling performances from Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Bronson plays a drifter suddenly caught up in the fight game during the Great Depression. Chaney, a down-on-his-luck loner, hops a freight train to New Orleans where, on the seedier side of town, he tries to make some quick money the only way he kno..
From the director of Au Revoir L'Ete and Hospitalite, Koji Fukada's Harmonium (Fuchi Ni Tatsu) screened to great acclaim at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Un Certain Regard Jury prize. Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) lives above the small workshop that he owns with his wife, Akie (Mariko Tsutsui) and his daughter, Hotaru. When Toshio invites Yasaka (an eerily intense Tadanobu Asano) to come and live with his family, it..
Fred Zinnemann directs this classic Western starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. Marshall Will Kane (Cooper) is due to retire from his duties as the sheriff of Hadleyville when word reaches him that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a vengeful outlaw who Kane once sent to prison, is due to arrive on the noon train. Kane's new bride Amy (Kelly) insists that he must leave immediately but Kane is too proud and refuses to be viewed as a coward..
An unforgettable mixture of bubblegum teen melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria, Nobuhiko Obayashi s deranged fairy tale House is one of Japanese cinema's wildest supernatural ventures and a truly startling debut feature. Upset by her widowed father's plans to remarry, Angel sets off with six of her schoolgirl friends in tow for a summer getaway at her aunt's isolated mansion. In this house of dormant secrets, long-held emotional traumas..
A startlingly dark, late film noir masterwork by director Fritz Lang, Human Desire reunites Lang with his hero Glenn Ford and femme fatale Gloria Grahame from the previous year's The Big Heat and the screenwriter of Lang's 1952 noir Clash by Night, Alfred Hayes. Like those two classics, Human Desire finds Lang casting a pitiless eye on all of the human weaknesses that define film noir: deception, infidelity, passion, and murder. Adapted..
Legendary director Lindsay Anderson expanded on the social outrage and intense character focus of his debut This Sporting Life with this combustible tale of teenage insurrection which blends harsh realism, dreamy surrealism and gimlet-eyed observation of the elaborate rules and rituals of public-school life. Winner of the 1969 Palme d’Or at Cannes, If.... was a popular triumph and instantly recognised as a classic.After years of reje..
One of director Billy Wilder's biggest box office hits following his landmark comedies Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, the spectacular Irma La Douce -adapted from the 1956 musical for the French theatre - reunites Wilder with his Apartment stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, providing the latter with one of her most fondly remembered (and Oscar-nominated) early roles. MacLaine is Irma, a popular Parisian prostitute who has just ..
Originally rejected by the BBFC on its original release for being "against nature", this first and best screen adaptation of H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau is a taboo-flaunting, blood-curdling spectacular, and one of Hollywood's wildest, most notorious, pre-Code pictures. Shipwrecked and adrift, Edward Parker finds himself a guest on Dr. Moreau's isolated South Seas island, but quickly discovers the horrifying nature of the docto..
From Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata, Cure) comes the winner of the Un Certain Regard Best Director award in Cannes, Journey to the Shore. This latest social drama confirms the richness and range of this single auteur. Mizuki's husband, Yusuke, drowned at sea three years ago. When he suddenly returns home, she, far from surprised, instead, wonders what took him so long. Together they embark on a journey to meet the people who helped him ..
One of the most beloved and iconic British films of all time (voted in the top 10 of all time by the British Film Institute), Ken Loach's breakthrough cinematic feature Kes is a cornerstone of naturalistic filmmaking whose influence is felt up to the present day. Portraying with remarkable detail and empathy the day-to-day existence of a working-class 15-year-old boy in Barnsley (an unforgettable performance by David Bradley), and the p..
A cult comic masterpiece from acclaimed director Philippe de Broca, King of Hearts was a flop upon initial release in France, but was a smash hit in the US, where it ended up running for five years straight. During the latter part of World War I, Private Charles Plumpick ( Alan Bates; Women in Love) is chosen to go into the French town of Marville and disconnect a bomb that the German army has planted. However, Charles is chased by some..
Kaneto Shindo's Kuroneko (Yabu no naka no kuroneko, or The Black Cat Inside the Bamboo Grove) - released to great acclaim in 1968 - is a sparse, atmospheric horror story, adhering to the director's philosophy of using beauty and purity to evoke emotion. Eccentric and more overtly supernatural than its breakthrough companion piece, Onibaba, Kuroneko revisits similar themes to reveal a haunting meditation on duty, conformity, and love. In..
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan features four nightmarish tales adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s classic Japanese ghost stories about mortals caught up in forces beyond their comprehension when the supernatural world intervenes in their lives: “The Black Hair”, “The Woman of the Snow”, “Hoichi the Earless”, and “In a Cup of Tea”.Breathtakingly photographed entirely on hand-painted sets, the film is an abstract wash o..
One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La notte [The Night] marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. La notte is Antonioni’s “Twilight of the Gods”, but composed in cinematic terms. Examined from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up..
Rene Laloux’s mesmerising psychedelic sci-fi animated feature won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and is a landmark of European animation. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en serie [Oms by the Dozen], Laloux’s breathtaking vision was released in France as La Planete sauvage [The Savage Planet], in the USA as Fantastic Planet, and immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Planet of the Apes (both the 1..
Although most commonly associated with the Wuxia genre, in 1979 King Hu directed the epic fantasy-horror, Legend of the Mountain. Heavily influenced by traditional Chinese aesthetics and Zen Buddhist philosophy, it has come to be regarded as one of his greatest filmmaking achievements. A young scholar, Ho Yunqing (Shih Jun, A Touch of Zen, Dragon Inn), is tasked by an eminent monk to transcribe a Buddhist sutra said to have immense powe..
Before he arrived in Hollywood to leave his indelible (and inimitable) mark on timeless comedies like Trouble in Paradise and The Shop Around The Corner, Ernst Lubitsch created an expansive body of work in Germany that proved to be as varied in tone as it was sophisticated in its measure of man and woman. This set collects six restored works from the silent phase of Lubitsch's career, and casts new light on the director both as a fully-..
Before he arrived in Hollywood to leave his indelible (and inimitable) mark on timeless comedies like Trouble in Paradise and The Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch created an expansive body of work in Germany that proved to be as varied in its tone as it was sophisticated in its measure of man and woman. This box set collects six recently restored works from the silent phase of Lubitsch's career, and casts new light on the director..
Of all Fritz Lang's creations, none have been more innovative or influential than M, the film that launched German cinema into the sound era with stunning sophistication and mesmerising artistry. A spate of child killings has stricken a terrified Berlin. Peter Lorre gives a legendary performance as the murderer Hans Beckert, who soon finds himself chased by all levels of society. From cinema's first serial killer hunt, Lang pulls back t..
Of all Fritz Lang's creations, none have been more innovative or influential than M, the film that launched German cinema into the sound era with stunning sophistication and mesmerising artistry. A spate of child killings has stricken a terrified Berlin. Peter Lorre gives a legendary performance as the murderer Hans Beckert, who soon finds himself chased by all levels of society. From cinema's first serial killer hunt, Lang pulls back t..
Before Ernst Lubitsch created his eminently sophisticated Hollywood sex comedies, he was at work in Germany perfecting his earliest entries into the genre, alongside sweeping ironic dramas based on historical events and often set in exotic locales. One of his earliest successes merged elements of both modes: Madame DuBarry. A recounting a la Lubitsch of the torrid affair between the title character (Pola Negri) and France's King Louis X..
Voted one of the ten best films ever made in the Sight & Sound 2012 poll, and the best documentary ever in a subsequent poll in 2014, Man With A Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom) stands as one of cinema's most essential documents - a dazzling exploration of the possibilities of image-making as related to the everyday world around us. The culmination of a decade of experiments to render "the chaos of visual phenomena filling the un..
A carefully crafted, open-to-everything mixture of live-wire reality and controlled narrative, Medium Cool is the debut fiction feature of Haskell Wexler, who had already established himself as one of Hollywood's premiere cinematographers in the post-studio-system-era on such films as Elia Kazan's America, America and Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? In 1968, he hurled himself into the tear-gas of the cultural-political mom..
One of the biggest film events of the century, a “Holy Grail” among film finds, Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi epic can finally be seen — for the first time in 83 years — as the director originally intended and as seen by German cinema-goers in 1927. Shortly after that 1927 release, an entire quarter of Lang’s original version was cut by Paramount for the US release, and by Ufa in Germany, an act of butchery very much against the director’s w..
One of the biggest film events of the century, a “Holy Grail” among film finds, Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi epic can finally be seen – for the first time in 83 years – as the director originally intended and as seen by German cinema-goers in 1927. Shortly after that 1927 release, an entire quarter of Lang's original version was cut by Paramount for the US release, and by Ufa in Germany, an act of butchery very much against the director's w..
Based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel of the same name, Dreyer's film is a fascinating fin-de-siecle study of a "decadent" elderly artist (Benjamin Christensen) driven to despair by his relationship with his young protege and former model, Michael (Walter Slezak). With suffocatingly sumptuous production design by renowned architect Hugo Haring (his only film work), this Kammerspiel, or "intimate theatre", foreshadows Dreyer's magnificent fi..
From the creators of GODZILLA, the classic Japanese monster movie that introduced us to one of the most unique creatures seen on film Eureka Entertainment to re-issue MOTHRA, Ishirō Honda’s stunningly inventive monster adventure-fantasy, on Blu-ray from 15 November 2021 as part of The Masters of Cinema Series. One of the most iconic Japanese kaiju, Mothra has appeared in over a dozen feature films. Presented here is her debut, a glo..
This trio of classic 1930s horror films—Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, and The Raven—is also distinguished by a trio of factors regarding their production. Most notably, each film is based on a work by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe. Part of the legendary wave of horror films made by Universal Pictures in the 30s, all three feature dynamic performances from Dracula's Bela Lugosi, with two of them also enlivened by the ..
An iconic film of the German expressionist cinema, and one of the most famous of all silent movies, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. A Symphony of Horror continues to haunt - and, indeed, terrify - modern audiences with the unshakable power of its images. By teasing a host of occult atmospherics out of dilapidated set-pieces and innocuous real-world locations alike, Murnau captured on celluloid the deeply-rooted elements of a waking nightmare, ..
An iconic film of the German expressionist cinema, and one of the most famous of all silent movies, F. W. Murnau s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror continues to haunt - and, indeed, terrify - modern audiences with the unshakable power of its images. By teasing a host of occult atmospherics out of dilapidated set - pieces and innocuous real - world locations alike, Murnau captured on celluloid the deeply - rooted elements of a waking nigh..
Three years after The Gospel According To Matthew, Pier Paolo Pasolini resumed his series of classical adaptations with a savage, highly personal take on Sophocles' ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re). As his first colour feature, Oedipus Rex makes brilliant use of wildly alternating Moroccan landscapes to transpose collective myth into a particular vision that is at once tender, sensual, and wholly unsparing.The film is divi..
One of director Billy Wilder's most frenetic comedies, the madcap Cold War and corporate politics satire One, Two, Three has to be one of the only films almost capable of making its Wilder predecessors Some Like It Hot and The Apartment seem sedately paced in comparison. Featuring a hilarious lead performance by James Cagney, One, Two, Three hasn't always been as famous as Wilder's other comedies, but it's among his best. Cagney is C.R...
Kaneto Shindo, one of Japan's most prolific directors, received his biggest international success with the release of Onibaba [The Demoness] in 1964. Its depiction of violence and graphic sexuality was unprecedented at the time of release. Shindo managed - through his own production company Kindai Eiga Kyokai - to bypass the strict, self-regulated Japanese film industry and pave the way for such films as Yasuzo Masumura's Mojuu (Blind B..
Continuing a run of Seventies smash-hits for director Peter Bogdanovich after the enormous success of his The Last Picture Show and What's Up, Doc?, Paper Moon saw the filmmaker sustaining his collaboration with actor Ryan O'Neal, and introduced the world to the precocious talent of the future Barry Lyndon star's daughter Tatum, then 10, who for her performance was the youngest-ever actress to be awarded as Academy Award for Best Suppor..
Samuel Fuller directs this 1950s US drama exploring the fierce competition between two newspapers in New York City. When dedicated journalist Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) launches his own newspaper, The Globe, he is delighted by its success and ability to capture the imagination of New Yorkers. However, the paper that previously employed Mitchell, The Star, is not about to cede its readership and sets about trying to reign in The Globe..
The world sometimes seems divide into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream, and those who remember them as having been an infernal, nightmarish hell. So it might do to describe Passe ton bac d'abord....(Graduate First... I Pass Your Bac First...) as Maurice Pialat's "The Best Years of Our Lives", while bearing in mind all that such a description might suggest: an unsparing portrait of the ..
A shattering masterpiece by one of the medium's greatest artists, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory announced the definitive arrival of a towering figure in cinema. In the French front lines of World War I, after giving the order for an impossible and disastrous mission to capture a nearby stronghold, the upper ranks move to save face by having three randomly selected soldiers held and tried for cowardice under pain of death. Their leade..
''If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb.'' ''Are you waving the flag at Me?!'' Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equalled in the annals of film. In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches ..
John Ford's classic drama about Dr Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter). When President Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr) is assassinated, the killer John Wilkes Booth (Francis McDonald) is injured in the attack and is treated by Dr Mudd, who is unaware of Booth's guilt. Mudd himself is arrested on suspicion of being involved with the assassination, and although he is given a last minute reprieve from the firing squad, he is sentenced to hard labour at..
LIMITED EDITION SLIPCASE + BOOKLET VERSIONEureka Entertainment to release PTU, an immersive crime thriller from Johnnie To, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK as part of The Masters of Cinema Series from 21 June 2021. The first print run of 2000 copies will feature a Limited-Edition O-card Slipcase. Set against a Hong Kong that never sleeps, a stolen police gun triggers a suspenseful chain of events. Tracking down his missing g..
Set in a remote Buddhist monastery in 16th Century China, Raining in the Mountain deals with a power struggle that ensues when the Abbot of the Three Treasures Temple announces his imminent retirement. The ageing Abbot invites three outsiders to advise him on the critical choice of appointing his successor: Esquire Wen, a wealthy patron of the monastery, General Wang, commander-in-chief of the local military, and Wu Wai, a respected l..
Arguably the defining cult film of the Reagan era, the feature debut of Alex Cox (Sid & Nancy, Walker, Straight to Hell) is a genre-busting mash-up of atomic-age science fiction, post-punk anarchism, and conspiracy paranoia, all shot through with heavy doses of deadpan humour and offbeat philosophy. With an iconic soundtrack (Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies), stunning Robby Muller cinematography, and iconoclastic direction, Re..
Perhaps one of the most underrated of the collaborations between director John Ford and star John Wayne, Rio Grande manages to be both a conclusion and a new beginning for this most iconic of actor-filmmaker collaborators. The film is the final entry in Ford and Wayne's “Cavalry Trilogy,” following their hits Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Yet it also marks the first of five appearances Wayne made with actress M..
From Luchino Visconti - the master director of such classics as La terra trema, Bellissima, and The Leopard - comes this epic study of family, sex, and betrayal. Alongside Fellini's La dolce vita and Antonioni's L'avventura, Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers ushered Italian cinema into a new era, one unafraid to confront head-on the hypocrisies of the ruling class, the squalor in urban living, and the collision between generations. When..
From Luchino Visconti - the master director of such classics as La terra trema, Bellissima, and The Leopard - comes this epic study of family, sex, and betrayal. Alongside Fellini's La dolce vita and Antonioni's L'avventura, Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers ushered Italian cinema into a new era, one unafraid to confront head-on the hypocrisies of the ruling class, the squalor in urban living, and the collision between generations. A ti..
In this second of Francis Ford Coppola’s back-to-back screen adaptations of novels by S. E. Hinton, the grand romanticism of The Outsiders was flipped to create an expressionist, monochrome vision of youthful passion and melancholy, and became one of Coppola’s most personal and dazzling works. Against a run-down, industrial Tulsa, Oklahoma, Coppola presents a vivid portrait of troubled teenage gang leader Rusty James (Matt Dillon) as he..
LIMITED EDITION SLIPCASE + BOOKLET (FIRST 2000 COPIES) - IF LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS (SLIPCASE + BOOKLET) ARE REQUIRED PLEASE CHECK WITH CUSTOMER SERVICES THAT THIS IS STILL AVAILABLE BEFORE ORDERINGEureka Entertainment to release Johnnie To’s RUNNING OUT OF TIME 1 & 2; two slickly made cat-and-mouse thrillers, and starring Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs, House of Flying Daggers), Lan Ching-wan and Ekin Cheng; scanned and restored in 2K a..
A harrowing drama set during the Salvadoran Civil War, Salvador is a one of director Oliver Stone’s most underrated films, a thrilling and violent look at the chaos of war as seen through the lens of an amoral photojournalist. In 1980, young men, women and children are being brutally killed in a bloody civil war in El Salvador. A horrific setting, but a perfect one for Richard Boyle (James Woods in an Oscar nominated role), a sleazy jou..
To the enigmatic question "Who are Seconds?", the film's original poster responded: "The answer is almost too terrifying for words...The story of a man who buys for himself a totally new life. A man who lives the age-old dream - if only i could live my life all over again." John Frankenheimer directs Rock Hudson as a "second": that is, the newly plastic-surgery altered "reboot" of, in this instance, a listless banker named Arthur Hamilt..
Sidney Lumet's 1973 crime drama Serpico remains one of the most influential cop movies – alongside Al Pacino's nuanced performance in a disturbing portrait of corruption and morality in the city that never sleeps. A plainclothes street patrolman, Frank Serpico (Pacino) might be the best cop in New York, but his unwillingness to play dirty and give into the police corruption surrounding drugs, violence, and kickbacks his colleagues indul..
One of the landmark and most enduring Westerns of the 1950s, George Stevens' Shane struck a chord with audiences at the time of its release, and continues to influence admirers today, even as it served as a template for the series of groundbreaking spaghetti-westerns of Sergio Leone. Alan Ladd plays the titular gunslinger, the archetypal ''man alone'' who wanders into town and shortly afterward becomes embroiled in a conflict between a ..
The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present - for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK - Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary about the Holocaust, Shoah, alongside the four films he made through 2013 on the subject. Lanzmann spent twelve years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the "Final Solution". Without dramatic re-enactment or archival footage - but with extraordinary testimonie..
Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda's 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda's excellent direction - coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu - gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems alrea..
Soul Power is a verite documentary - compiled entirely from footage shot in 1974 - of the astonishing back-to-Africa three-day music festival "Zaire 74", held in Kinshasa ahead of the biggest boxing event of all time: the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle". Directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, editor of Leon Gast's Oscar-winning (Best Documentary) When We Were Kings, and sourced from the same archival pool, Soul Power feature..
Fritz Lang's penultimate silent film, Spione (Spies) is a flawlessly constructed labyrinthine spy thriller. Hugely influential, Lang's famous passion for meticulous detail combines with masterful story-telling and editing skills to form a relentless tale of intrigue, espionage, and blackmail. An international spy ring, headed by Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), uses technology, threats and murder to obtain government secrets. As master spy, ..
Billy Wilder followed up his brilliant Ace in the Hole with this darkly comic adaptation of Donald Bevan's and Edmund Trzcinski's stage play about an assortment of American airmen getting through the days in a German POW camp at the twilight of the Second World War. William Holden stars as the laconic J.J. Sefton, a prisoner whose cynical and mercenary disposition leads his fellow prisoners to conjecture his role as an informant after t..
This new edition of Sunrise (for the first time anywhere in the world on Blu-ray) contains two versions of the film: the previously released Movietone version and an alternate silent version of the film, recently discovered in the Czech Republic, of a higher visual quality than any other known source. The culmination of one of the greatest careers in film history, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise blends a story of fable-like simplicity with unpara..
